The internet makes the dissociation between nationality/geography and culture even starker./.ers, for example, have a cultural outlook more similar to one another than to the average of his/her national peer. Same applies to many other online communities.
California may be incredibly diverse racially, ethnically, religiously, and so forth, but try coming to the Midwest, the South, or the Intermountain West. Most of the United States' diversity is heavily concentrated on the East and West Coasts and a few major metropolises in between.
My hometown, St. Louis, Missouri, which once had the highest percentage of residents born abroad, now has a pretty low immigrant population and has small (but growing) Asian- and Hispanic-American communities. You'll rarely hear a language other than English spoken on the street here.
Don't get stuck assuming how things are in California or New York are true for the whole country: That's a cultural problem within our own country!
The socialist aspects of the Cuban state are a definite plus, but the Cuban government overall is extraordinarily anti-liberal: There is no reason why a democratic society can't have a better social welfare system as exists in Western Europe.
I'd say the New York Times is calling those who oppose copyright law as it now stands the Copy Left because they're opposing the stance of most large, for-profit corporations. Not all the members of the Copy Left are leftist in general; but, in this particular aspect, taking a reactionary viewpoint derived from the likes of Thomas Jefferson is leftist!
As a libertarian, I'd like to say congratulations to the Republicans! My conservative fellows in right-as-in-true ideology know that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and you've got to look out for Number One. We need fewer restrictions on liberty; the Democratic Party, socialist as it is, doesn't need to be keeping secrets, anyway.
I sincerely hope the Republicans searched the free marketplace to find the best computer crackers for the job, and I hope the crackers were paid no more than the market equilibrium prescribes for their services. Doing otherwise would be irrational bureaucratic nonsense.
Join me, won't you, in casting off the shackles of oppressive big libero-taxing government, decision-making centralization, anti-free-enterprise regulation, and coercive politically correct thinking!
2) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit libertarianism, by exaggerating [the] way you understand it's [sic] position to be
Yes!
3) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit socialism, by exaggerating the way you understand it's [sic] position to be
Yes, my exaggerated libertarian persona is trying to do a poor job at discrediting a rival ideology.
4) You're a troll
That hurts! You're right again, though. I guess it was more than a bit of a troll. The problem was I hadn't seen any stupid libertarian responses to this article yet that invoked the sanctity of the free market.
Like many Slashdotting libertarians, I was greatly affected by the 9/11 craze that's been sweeping this great land of ours, America. I'm still very much for civil and economic liberties, but we must protect ourselves from the terrorist who could be just around the corner. I hope the government arrests my next-door neighbor next: I think he's kind of shady; and, with a tan, he looks like he could be Middle Eastern if you use your imagination.
While it is true that nu means naked in French, it is the masculine, singular form. This would work for domains like homme.nu, I suppose; but it would not be in gender agreement with feminine nouns: belle-femme.nue.
Wah, wah, wah! I guess you and the Government of Niue aren't exactly libertarians. Maybe a shady group of profiteers did usurp Niue's ccTLD: Does that make it right for Niue to take it back? No! It's an axiom of libertarianism that private enterprise is more efficient than the state, and now these genius entrepreneurs have made the.nu ccTLD more profitable than a dinky island nation ever could!
I'm really tired of all these left-wing radicals coming to Slashdot, telling a sob story to try to persuade everyone that the free market isn't always right. If the Government of Niue were in the right, the market would find a way to correct this error! Don't you see?
I'll break out of libertarian ideology for a moment, though, and engage in a small amount of socialism: I believe the Government of Niue should be able to apply to the IANA for a new ccTLD, maybe a long ccTLD like.niue as punishment for not protecting their valuable asset in the first place. Note I did not say the IANA has to grant the GON's wish.
So now the leader of a government that has committed countless crimes against humanity has been captured. I'm sure the Iraqis are relieved. Now what? The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq has not exactly been going smoothly, and the United States has been shooting itself in the foot by denying a greater role for traditional allies like France and Germany and for international institutions like the United Nations.
Saddam Hussein's capture is nothing more than a media distraction to redirect the U.S. public from the Bush administration's foreign policy failures.
Don't get me wrong: I'm as glad as anyone else that such a cruel, autocratic man can now be brought to justice, but it is still important to keep a critical eye on our government.
I'd say more likely the public is unaware of labor abuses and so forth. Now, even if the public were made aware, they might think that their lives are crud too so they feel justified in buying from an abusive retailer; possibly, competitors would employ the same practices to reduce costs. It's a lose-lose situation.
Now, with government regulations protecting labor rights, your employees can demand safe working conditions, at least a minimum wage, and so on. I don't see the problem with that; the government is just enabling a minority to protect itself from the whims of the market.
It's nonsense that "voting with your pocketbook" is democratic: Some people have more money than others. You can see the results of people's voting with their pocketbooks now: the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Enron scandal, etc.
I think the United States would be better off if it moved away from the idea that there is no responsibility but to the market.
Populism and socialism are not necessarily contradictory things. I'd say voicing an informed opinion about some of the injustices created in the American capitalist system is populist and somewhat socialist.
If you're on the libertarian right, don't you know anyone who has tried to be successful to the best of their abilities but who has fallen on hard times at some point in time? If you do, why do you have a problem with the government making assistance available to make it easier for this person to get back on their feet? It's not as though a liberal criticism of the current state of affairs is equivalent to a rallying cry for Soviet-style communism!
My political beliefs are simple:
1. The government should allow for a diversity of opinions through the protection of the rights to freedom of speech, press, association, and religion. Occassionally, this will mean the government must regulate the market to prevent the concentration of idea-distribution power (television, radio, newspapers, etc.) in the hands of a few. Usually, it means a social contract between the government and the people that the government will not arbitrarily create laws to limit these freedoms even if these limitations would be done for popular reasons.
2. The government has a duty to make sure those unable to take care of themselves are provided for, in some way or another. This refers to those with extreme mental and physical disabilities, children, and some of the elderly.
3. The government has a duty to be responsible to the people's will so long as it does not violate constitutional principles.
4. The government has a duty to provide certain consumer and employee protections because the market cannot make these guarantees on its own. (Libertarians: Please take a look at 19th century American history.)
5. The government has the duty to make sure everyone who wants the chance can have the opportunity to succeed as they'd like to succeed. This means public education funding, anti-discrimination in employment laws, etc.
6. The government has the duty to forbid certain behaviors that are damaging to others: murder, rape, fraud, theft, etc. The government has no authority to forbid behaviors that do not harm others (consensual sexual behaviors, recreational drug use, etc.).
So many complaints about how gerrymandering distorts the opinion of the people as a whole...since when was democracy about the people anyway?
I've heard that the word democracy comes from Greek: -Cracy means rule by and demo- comes from demos, which obviously must mean demons. Therefore, democracy is rule by the demons. I think it's only reasonable to expect war, lies, power struggles, cover-ups for cozy relationships between government and business, and a general ignorance for what the people what their government to be when their government is organized as rule by the demons!
It would seem to me that, if a malicious coder were able to find a way to circumvent the normal security procedures, perhaps through a worm that spreads through an unknown (to Microsoft) vulnerability, the forced auto-update mechanism could be made to download even more malicious software. If Microsoft isn't taking every step possible and then some to prevent this, we could see the headline "Windows Longhorn Auto-Update Downloads Virus" in newspapers in a few years.
Now that most people have gotten adjusted to using the Internet, they'll be in for a little shock when they have a dialogue box pop up every time they come to a website with dynamic components that access external data.
Your Mother/Grandmother (and the neophytes of the world): "Son/Grandson, what happened to my Internet? I used to get the dancing baby, but, after I upgraded my Internet to the new version my computer told me was critical to get, I get this funny message box every time I go to that site. Could you fix that for me?"
I can imagine a system being set up for info URIs so that a user agent can resolve a public namespace to an "info server" that would process that info URI for the given namespace and provide information, possibly in an XML or XHTML format.
Imagine typing in the info URI for a Library of Congress call number and getting back information about the material referenced by that call number from a the Library of Congress server itself. For something common like weather or map, I guess you could choose what provider would handle that info URI for you. Thus, you could choose to have info-uri.weather-forecasts.org whereas your neighbor might choose some other service. However, whatever service is chosen, they will all follow the same standard. A programmer could write a browser plug-in for that would get XML data from whatever source and spit out XHTML nicely formatted so that they can get the weather tidbits most useful for them.
I can already see so many great uses for this scheme if institution politics doesn't get in the way! I'm half tempted to develop something to use this even if there is no formal standard behind it.
As a Missourian and an incoming freshman at a University of Missouri campus (not Rolla), I am glad to see that not only did the University of Missouri - Rolla win but that my University of Missouri Columbia placed six. This goes to show that people should look beyond the Ivy Leagues and consider that a closer school might be almost as good and a lot cheaper.
I agree wholeheartedly with the other people recommending St. Louis. It's often overlooked by those who stick to the coasts, but it's got a lot more to it than you might think.
The Butterfly House, located in suburban St. Louis, exhibits tropical butterflies in a walkthrough rainforest environment.
Along the Missouri River is the Katie Trail for cyclists. You can head west from St. Charles, northwest of the Missouri River from St. Louis proper, and ride the trail west through some great wooded areas.
A historic St. Louis suburb, Kirkwood, has the Museum of Transportation. Also, Historic Route 66 runs through the St. Louis area.
As you probably would have guessed, telemarketers have already abused the state do-not-call lists. The logic used by one law-breaking business is that the people on the do-not-call lists probably get fewer calls so they will be more likely to answer immediately and hear what the telemarketer has to say. It's sad to say, but some do-not-call-listers have actually bought products from this company.
Has this business been reported yet? I have no idea. I'm sure other businesses are doing this, too, unfortunately.
Exactly. In fact, this is how I began programming. After learning HTML, I heard about JavaScript and what it could do for webpages. It didn't really fix my craving for learning real programming to make a nice computer game, but it was better than trying to edit pre-existing *.EXE files in Notepad or EDIT.COM to try to see whether that would change anything!
Eventually, I did get a real C++ compiler, Visual C++ 6.0; and this was about a month after I had begun learning C++! Yes, DGJPP did exist, but it was for DOS, and it was too large a download for my connection at the time.
Being left handed, I have a more difficult time legibly writing cursive (and even print) than right handers. I for one am glad that typing is now an option because now people can actually read what I have to say. If any future professor of mine wants to preserve my handwriting abilities by requiring handwritten assignments, okay, you can try to read it on your own time.
Cursive, by the way, isn't any faster to write for me. My printing has (d)evolved into a quick, connected mess that works well for quick notetaking and is mostly legible for me at least.
I don't know what has been done in other regions, but in St. Louis, Charter Communications has tiered service. That means, if you want more than a few hundred kilobit per second downstream transfers, you'll have to pay both arms and both legs for it. I can only imagine how expensive bronze service will get if the FCC approves this tax.
People living in rural areas may be complaining about the cost of broadband, but it's already expensive enough in the cities! This, farm subsidies, and other abuses are the result of rural inhabitants getting undue representation in government. The federal government needs to be democraticized, starting by eliminating the Electoral College and by allowing nationwide referendums coinciding with presidential elections.
---
[blatant troll]
That 40% of all e-mail in the U.S. is now spam goes to show you what happens when people are left to their own devices. The same thing has happened in AIM's public chat rooms--tons of spam bots advertising porn, warez, outwar, etc.
Technological action, filters, is not enough. Regulations that hit spammers in the bank account are the only way to force compliance out of these miscreants. We must be virulent against spammers routing their wares through overseas and anonymous servers. These loathsome perverters of technology need to be extracted from their lairs and delt with with all force needed to exterminate their faulty business practices.
[/blant troll]
The United States and the rest of the industrialized world is currently so dependent on oil it's ridiculous. International lust for oil has fueled much diplomatic unease and has indirectly ignited the flame of terrorism.
Moving away from nonrenewable fuels like oil is crucial to the future of the United States and elsewhere. The problem is that hydrogen, or some other renewable fuel, must be extracted in a way that does not waste more energy. If the U.S. starts extracting hydrogen using energy supplied by local but nonrenewable energy sources, that is a good first step away from Middle Eastern oil independence, but the next step cannot be forgotten: switching to a completely renewable source.
Even with significant government aid and corporate and academic cooperation, it seems unrealistic to expect cultural and technological changeover in a decade.
Slashdot Mirror
Three blind phreaks
Three blind phreaks
See how they run
Away from law enforcement!
The internet makes the dissociation between nationality/geography and culture even starker. /.ers, for example, have a cultural outlook more similar to one another than to the average of his/her national peer. Same applies to many other online communities.
Sorry, not I. I think different.
California may be incredibly diverse racially, ethnically, religiously, and so forth, but try coming to the Midwest, the South, or the Intermountain West. Most of the United States' diversity is heavily concentrated on the East and West Coasts and a few major metropolises in between.
My hometown, St. Louis, Missouri, which once had the highest percentage of residents born abroad, now has a pretty low immigrant population and has small (but growing) Asian- and Hispanic-American communities. You'll rarely hear a language other than English spoken on the street here.
Don't get stuck assuming how things are in California or New York are true for the whole country: That's a cultural problem within our own country!
The socialist aspects of the Cuban state are a definite plus, but the Cuban government overall is extraordinarily anti-liberal: There is no reason why a democratic society can't have a better social welfare system as exists in Western Europe.
I'd say the New York Times is calling those who oppose copyright law as it now stands the Copy Left because they're opposing the stance of most large, for-profit corporations. Not all the members of the Copy Left are leftist in general; but, in this particular aspect, taking a reactionary viewpoint derived from the likes of Thomas Jefferson is leftist!
As a libertarian, I'd like to say congratulations to the Republicans! My conservative fellows in right-as-in-true ideology know that it's a dog-eat-dog world out there and you've got to look out for Number One. We need fewer restrictions on liberty; the Democratic Party, socialist as it is, doesn't need to be keeping secrets, anyway.
I sincerely hope the Republicans searched the free marketplace to find the best computer crackers for the job, and I hope the crackers were paid no more than the market equilibrium prescribes for their services. Doing otherwise would be irrational bureaucratic nonsense.
Join me, won't you, in casting off the shackles of oppressive big libero-taxing government, decision-making centralization, anti-free-enterprise regulation, and coercive politically correct thinking!
Somebody award this brilliant man a prize!
2) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit libertarianism, by exaggerating [the] way you understand it's [sic] position to be
Yes!
3) You are being subtle, and trying to discredit socialism, by exaggerating the way you understand it's [sic] position to be
Yes, my exaggerated libertarian persona is trying to do a poor job at discrediting a rival ideology.
4) You're a troll
That hurts! You're right again, though. I guess it was more than a bit of a troll. The problem was I hadn't seen any stupid libertarian responses to this article yet that invoked the sanctity of the free market.
Like many Slashdotting libertarians, I was greatly affected by the 9/11 craze that's been sweeping this great land of ours, America. I'm still very much for civil and economic liberties, but we must protect ourselves from the terrorist who could be just around the corner. I hope the government arrests my next-door neighbor next: I think he's kind of shady; and, with a tan, he looks like he could be Middle Eastern if you use your imagination.
While it is true that nu means naked in French, it is the masculine, singular form. This would work for domains like homme.nu, I suppose; but it would not be in gender agreement with feminine nouns: belle-femme.nue.
Wah, wah, wah! I guess you and the Government of Niue aren't exactly libertarians. Maybe a shady group of profiteers did usurp Niue's ccTLD: Does that make it right for Niue to take it back? No! It's an axiom of libertarianism that private enterprise is more efficient than the state, and now these genius entrepreneurs have made the .nu ccTLD more profitable than a dinky island nation ever could!
I'm really tired of all these left-wing radicals coming to Slashdot, telling a sob story to try to persuade everyone that the free market isn't always right. If the Government of Niue were in the right, the market would find a way to correct this error! Don't you see?
I'll break out of libertarian ideology for a moment, though, and engage in a small amount of socialism: I believe the Government of Niue should be able to apply to the IANA for a new ccTLD, maybe a long ccTLD like .niue as punishment for not protecting their valuable asset in the first place. Note I did not say the IANA has to grant the GON's wish.
So now the leader of a government that has committed countless crimes against humanity has been captured. I'm sure the Iraqis are relieved. Now what? The U.S.-led occupation of Iraq has not exactly been going smoothly, and the United States has been shooting itself in the foot by denying a greater role for traditional allies like France and Germany and for international institutions like the United Nations.
Saddam Hussein's capture is nothing more than a media distraction to redirect the U.S. public from the Bush administration's foreign policy failures.
Don't get me wrong: I'm as glad as anyone else that such a cruel, autocratic man can now be brought to justice, but it is still important to keep a critical eye on our government.
I'd say more likely the public is unaware of labor abuses and so forth. Now, even if the public were made aware, they might think that their lives are crud too so they feel justified in buying from an abusive retailer; possibly, competitors would employ the same practices to reduce costs. It's a lose-lose situation.
Now, with government regulations protecting labor rights, your employees can demand safe working conditions, at least a minimum wage, and so on. I don't see the problem with that; the government is just enabling a minority to protect itself from the whims of the market.
It's nonsense that "voting with your pocketbook" is democratic: Some people have more money than others. You can see the results of people's voting with their pocketbooks now: the invasion and occupation of Iraq, the Enron scandal, etc.
I think the United States would be better off if it moved away from the idea that there is no responsibility but to the market.
Populism and socialism are not necessarily contradictory things. I'd say voicing an informed opinion about some of the injustices created in the American capitalist system is populist and somewhat socialist.
If you're on the libertarian right, don't you know anyone who has tried to be successful to the best of their abilities but who has fallen on hard times at some point in time? If you do, why do you have a problem with the government making assistance available to make it easier for this person to get back on their feet? It's not as though a liberal criticism of the current state of affairs is equivalent to a rallying cry for Soviet-style communism!
My political beliefs are simple:
1. The government should allow for a diversity of opinions through the protection of the rights to freedom of speech, press, association, and religion. Occassionally, this will mean the government must regulate the market to prevent the concentration of idea-distribution power (television, radio, newspapers, etc.) in the hands of a few. Usually, it means a social contract between the government and the people that the government will not arbitrarily create laws to limit these freedoms even if these limitations would be done for popular reasons.
2. The government has a duty to make sure those unable to take care of themselves are provided for, in some way or another. This refers to those with extreme mental and physical disabilities, children, and some of the elderly.
3. The government has a duty to be responsible to the people's will so long as it does not violate constitutional principles.
4. The government has a duty to provide certain consumer and employee protections because the market cannot make these guarantees on its own. (Libertarians: Please take a look at 19th century American history.)
5. The government has the duty to make sure everyone who wants the chance can have the opportunity to succeed as they'd like to succeed. This means public education funding, anti-discrimination in employment laws, etc.
6. The government has the duty to forbid certain behaviors that are damaging to others: murder, rape, fraud, theft, etc. The government has no authority to forbid behaviors that do not harm others (consensual sexual behaviors, recreational drug use, etc.).
So many complaints about how gerrymandering distorts the opinion of the people as a whole...since when was democracy about the people anyway?
I've heard that the word democracy comes from Greek: -Cracy means rule by and demo- comes from demos, which obviously must mean demons. Therefore, democracy is rule by the demons. I think it's only reasonable to expect war, lies, power struggles, cover-ups for cozy relationships between government and business, and a general ignorance for what the people what their government to be when their government is organized as rule by the demons!
It would seem to me that, if a malicious coder were able to find a way to circumvent the normal security procedures, perhaps through a worm that spreads through an unknown (to Microsoft) vulnerability, the forced auto-update mechanism could be made to download even more malicious software. If Microsoft isn't taking every step possible and then some to prevent this, we could see the headline "Windows Longhorn Auto-Update Downloads Virus" in newspapers in a few years.
Now that most people have gotten adjusted to using the Internet, they'll be in for a little shock when they have a dialogue box pop up every time they come to a website with dynamic components that access external data.
Your Mother/Grandmother (and the neophytes of the world): "Son/Grandson, what happened to my Internet? I used to get the dancing baby, but, after I upgraded my Internet to the new version my computer told me was critical to get, I get this funny message box every time I go to that site. Could you fix that for me?"
I can imagine a system being set up for info URIs so that a user agent can resolve a public namespace to an "info server" that would process that info URI for the given namespace and provide information, possibly in an XML or XHTML format.
Imagine typing in the info URI for a Library of Congress call number and getting back information about the material referenced by that call number from a the Library of Congress server itself. For something common like weather or map, I guess you could choose what provider would handle that info URI for you. Thus, you could choose to have info-uri.weather-forecasts.org whereas your neighbor might choose some other service. However, whatever service is chosen, they will all follow the same standard. A programmer could write a browser plug-in for that would get XML data from whatever source and spit out XHTML nicely formatted so that they can get the weather tidbits most useful for them.
I can already see so many great uses for this scheme if institution politics doesn't get in the way! I'm half tempted to develop something to use this even if there is no formal standard behind it.
As a Missourian and an incoming freshman at a University of Missouri campus (not Rolla), I am glad to see that not only did the University of Missouri - Rolla win but that my University of Missouri Columbia placed six. This goes to show that people should look beyond the Ivy Leagues and consider that a closer school might be almost as good and a lot cheaper.
I agree wholeheartedly with the other people recommending St. Louis. It's often overlooked by those who stick to the coasts, but it's got a lot more to it than you might think.
The Butterfly House, located in suburban St. Louis, exhibits tropical butterflies in a walkthrough rainforest environment.
Along the Missouri River is the Katie Trail for cyclists. You can head west from St. Charles, northwest of the Missouri River from St. Louis proper, and ride the trail west through some great wooded areas.
A historic St. Louis suburb, Kirkwood, has the Museum of Transportation. Also, Historic Route 66 runs through the St. Louis area.
As you probably would have guessed, telemarketers have already abused the state do-not-call lists. The logic used by one law-breaking business is that the people on the do-not-call lists probably get fewer calls so they will be more likely to answer immediately and hear what the telemarketer has to say. It's sad to say, but some do-not-call-listers have actually bought products from this company.
Has this business been reported yet? I have no idea. I'm sure other businesses are doing this, too, unfortunately.
Exactly. In fact, this is how I began programming. After learning HTML, I heard about JavaScript and what it could do for webpages. It didn't really fix my craving for learning real programming to make a nice computer game, but it was better than trying to edit pre-existing *.EXE files in Notepad or EDIT.COM to try to see whether that would change anything!
Eventually, I did get a real C++ compiler, Visual C++ 6.0; and this was about a month after I had begun learning C++! Yes, DGJPP did exist, but it was for DOS, and it was too large a download for my connection at the time.
Being left handed, I have a more difficult time legibly writing cursive (and even print) than right handers. I for one am glad that typing is now an option because now people can actually read what I have to say. If any future professor of mine wants to preserve my handwriting abilities by requiring handwritten assignments, okay, you can try to read it on your own time. Cursive, by the way, isn't any faster to write for me. My printing has (d)evolved into a quick, connected mess that works well for quick notetaking and is mostly legible for me at least.
I don't know what has been done in other regions, but in St. Louis, Charter Communications has tiered service. That means, if you want more than a few hundred kilobit per second downstream transfers, you'll have to pay both arms and both legs for it. I can only imagine how expensive bronze service will get if the FCC approves this tax. People living in rural areas may be complaining about the cost of broadband, but it's already expensive enough in the cities! This, farm subsidies, and other abuses are the result of rural inhabitants getting undue representation in government. The federal government needs to be democraticized, starting by eliminating the Electoral College and by allowing nationwide referendums coinciding with presidential elections. ---
[blatant troll]
That 40% of all e-mail in the U.S. is now spam goes to show you what happens when people are left to their own devices. The same thing has happened in AIM's public chat rooms--tons of spam bots advertising porn, warez, outwar, etc.
Technological action, filters, is not enough. Regulations that hit spammers in the bank account are the only way to force compliance out of these miscreants. We must be virulent against spammers routing their wares through overseas and anonymous servers. These loathsome perverters of technology need to be extracted from their lairs and delt with with all force needed to exterminate their faulty business practices.
[/blant troll]
(Cowers away from the libertarian response.)
The United States and the rest of the industrialized world is currently so dependent on oil it's ridiculous. International lust for oil has fueled much diplomatic unease and has indirectly ignited the flame of terrorism.
Moving away from nonrenewable fuels like oil is crucial to the future of the United States and elsewhere. The problem is that hydrogen, or some other renewable fuel, must be extracted in a way that does not waste more energy. If the U.S. starts extracting hydrogen using energy supplied by local but nonrenewable energy sources, that is a good first step away from Middle Eastern oil independence, but the next step cannot be forgotten: switching to a completely renewable source.
Even with significant government aid and corporate and academic cooperation, it seems unrealistic to expect cultural and technological changeover in a decade.